Comment: Why does our government allow this to happen to her people? Greed, pure greed! Most of the Mt. Top Removal is shipped overseas!
by LJFurman on November 12, 2009
According to Mortality Rates in Appalachian Coal Mining Counties: 24 Years Behind the Nation, by Michael Hendryx, of the Department of Community Medicine, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, http://www.sludgesafety.org/health/Mortality_Coal.pdf,
mortality is 10.21 % higher in Appalachia than elsewhere in the US, and 18.45 % higher in in coal mining counties where 4 million tons or more of coal are mined. (See also Coal Tattoo.)
Part of the problem is poverty, lack of education, smoking, and other factors, but these are all related to the coal economy.
This “may reflect the unique relationship of mining activity to topography and population centers characteristic of Appalachia. ... Coal contains mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic, manganese, beryllium, chromium, and many other toxic and carcinogenic substances and the mining and preparation of coal at local processing sites releases tons of annual ambient particulate matter and contaminates billions of gallons of water.”
In another study, “with co-author Melissa Ahern of Washington State University, Hendryx reports that the coal industry generates a little more than $8 billion a year in economic benefits for the Appalachian region.
But, Hendryx and Ahern put the value of premature deaths attributable to the mining industry across the Appalachian coalfields at -- by one of their most conservative estimates -- $42 billion.
"The human cost of the Appalachian coal mining economy outweighs its economic benefits," they wrote. The costs are 5.25 times higher than the benefits. And that's only in terms of premature deaths. It doesn't discuss environmental degradation.
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http://popularlogistics.com/2009/11/king-coal-wise-monarch-or-cruel-and-ruthless-despot/
